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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,832.

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For Tuesday 11 April 2023, today's show is entitled, How I Left Google Behind.

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It is hosted by Minix and is about 30 minutes long.

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It carries a clean flag.

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The summary is, just an overview of what services I now use to replace previously used Google

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services.

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This is Minix.

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I thought I'd do a little overview of what I did to get rid of Google.

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I'll replace all the different Google services used in the past and not really so much

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why.

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Just everybody has their own reasons.

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I guess the main reason is I just wanted to have control over my data and services I used

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and didn't really want to depend on another company to do that for me.

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Mainly because if they ever go under, which Google is pretty big company, but still, if

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they ever go under, then I just lose all my stuff and if I was going to lose everything,

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I wanted it to be me that screwed up and not depending on another company.

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So this is just kind of off the top of my head, so I made this a few things, but I wanted

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to go ahead and get a show out for the queue, so I've been through lots of iterations

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of different hardware to host these different services and it would deserve its own

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show, everything I've tried for many PCs, the Raspberry Pi's, all that stuff, but currently

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I've settled on just a decent desktop computer, which I use as a server.

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It's got a 11.05 and 64 gigabytes of RAM and 12 terabytes of SSDs.

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Now on top of that, I run ProxMox, which is a deviant-based hypervisor, and within that,

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I run my services as either Linux containers or Virtual Machines depending on what the actual

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application is, so I'll just kind of go down the line of what I host and what it replaces

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for me as far as Google goes.

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One of the first things I was interested in was NexCloud, before it was NexCloud, it was

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own Cloud, and I had hosted that not really successfully on the original Raspberry Pi,

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and there was so underpowered that just waiting for the web interface to load, took forever.

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But that was my first kind of self-hosting experience.

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Since then, I've gone through, like I've said, lots of different machines, but currently

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I run NexCloud on the ProxMox server.

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And that helps me replace things like Google Drive, Google Photos.

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I was using it for Google Photos quite a bit to the point that I got a message from Google

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eventually that said, if you want to use this much data, you can have to start paying

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for it, which was another reason that I kind of wanted to get off Google Services.

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Like I said, if I'm going to pay for something, I'd rather be something that I physically

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own here rather than Cloud Storage on somebody else's computer.

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So NexCloud handled my handle's, my photo library now, it handles my notes, so I was

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using Google Keep, I believe it's called, you know, for a long time, which was nice

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because I could access it across different browsers and machines, as long as I had a Gmail

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account.

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And now I use NexCloud Notes instead.

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There's a few features that doesn't have that Google Keep does, but it's nothing that

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prevents me from using it as I like to use it, which is just a simple note-taking app.

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I don't really use it to compose letters or anything like that.

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That's more, and kind of the open office territory.

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Which is another thing that I use NexCloud for, is for office applications like, like

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a, you know, or do you have Google sheets and stuff like that.

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I use the NexCloud Office for that.

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So follow notes, just general data that would go to Google Drive and I'll keep on my

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NexCloud.

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The next thing was getting my email up and running, and that's the very first Google service

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I started with was email.

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Everything I researched online made it seem like you had to be like a hardcore admin, you

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know, graveyard to everyone on email server.

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But honestly, if you have the right ISP that will allow certain ports to be open with

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25, so that you can send and receive email, it's not that difficult.

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At least the way I run it is not.

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I use an application called IRedmail.

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I use the community edition, so you have to maintain it yourself, but it's free and open

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source, and that's installed within a VM on ProxMox on Debian.

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And it's not really, I mean, it's a little daunting at first getting it set up.

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But once it's set up and you have your spam filters working and you have your, you know,

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your DMark records, everything within your DNS setup correctly is long as your ISP allows

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you, like I said, to have like, you know, port 25 open, which mouse servers need, what's

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a lot of ISPs don't.

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So if you're going to host an email server, check first with your ISP that you can actually

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do so, host an email server.

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With my ISP, it's not really a problem.

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I actually just call them and told them what I was going to do, and they open the port

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right up for me, so, but you might want to check beforehand, just to make sure you send

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before you actually get into installing it.

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So I use our redmail, there's like a million different options out there, and it comes

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with a nice little administrative interface, web-based interface, and I have that on, I believe

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256 gigabytes of space, and I have my personal email and my kind of contracting email

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that I do different work on with customers as well, and then I have an email address on

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there that I use just for like promotional stuff, you know, enter contest or design up

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for different things.

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So, and that works pretty well, and I don't really have an issue with spam here with

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our email, and I think I use about four gigs of RAM with that virtual machine from

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my email, but like I said, if you take the time to read the docs and take your time

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with setup and go through all the instructions carefully, and I have just at least a basic

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knowledge of the way computers and networking works, and Linux in my case, I think you

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will find it's not nearly as daunting as they say it is, so I use my mail server for

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everything, mail-related now, I don't, then I'm teaching email or any other email service.

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So that replaced Gmail for me, as far as a music app, I was big into Google Play Music,

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and it was cool at the time because you could upload all of your music to Google Play Music

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and then you could access it for free with the app, and if you wanted to use their music

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library, like for things you didn't own, you could pay a fee just like any other music

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streaming service, and I did that for a while, I had Google Play Music, and I had a big

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library on there, and it worked okay until they switched to YouTube music, and then I hated

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it, I hated the interface, I hated a lot of my music that I had uploaded was no longer

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on there, I guess because of licensing rights, and the quality of the audio was bad, it was

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like they were using YouTube video, YouTube videos of the songs that I had uploaded, you know,

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and high quality, and playing them back, and you know, as like a low quality YouTube video

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quality, and even if I had changed the settings, the high quality, it's still a sad bad,

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and a friend of mine had to spotify a family account, so he put me on there, and that was

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better than YouTube music, I still have that account, I don't use it for much, but the

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quality at least was better, and the number of artists was more varied, and but still there

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were things that I would look for on there that I owned, that I knew existed because I

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listened to them, but they just weren't on Spotify, and so I said, well, I got this giant

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music library, well, and I just hosted myself as well, so what I came into was a funk well,

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which if you remember there was a service called Groove Shark a long time ago that you could

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upload your own music library to, and then you could play other songs from other people's libraries,

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and it was all free, it was ad-supported, but basically, you know, you didn't pay anything,

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and that eventually got killed by, I think, copyright holders and things like that, so

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funk well, you could say, is kind of like the Groove Shark spiritual successor,

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that's kind of where they get the name, and it's a, you know, the self-host data,

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or they have recommended hostages too, but it not only does it host you music library,

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but the web interface is really nice, and the mobile app is really nice, I use it for Android,

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and also, it's federated too, it's part of the Fediver, so if anybody else, you know, you can

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follow somebody's music library from any federated app, or you can federate your funk well

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over with theirs, which I do was with one of my co-hosts on a Linux podcast, we have federated our

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servers together, so we can share a music, and it's, it's, it's a really good, not just music

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listening, but music sharing, application, and, and it's good at, you know, tagging your music and

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all that stuff, it's what I use for, for, in place of play music slash YouTube music, I have

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Spotify now, and I like, you know, I've been able to, you know, browse other people's libraries

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and find find a lot of cool stuff too, that kind of how how Spotify recommends your music,

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I can browse other people's federated libraries, and do the same thing with funk well, and plus

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it's my music, you know, it's not gonna go away anytime soon unless I just screw up my server or

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something, but speaking of YouTube music, there's also YouTube, as in the original video service,

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which I, I still use, but I use it in a way that I'm not logging into Google, and so I guess it's

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not completely leaving Google behind, but for me, it's a lot better experience,

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which I use a service called Invidious, which I host myself, and it's just a, it's an alternate

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user interface for YouTube, and it's very low in resources, I think I only give it, I could give you

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RAM or something, but you can create a account on your Invidious server, you can give the address to

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other people, so they can use your Invidious server, but what it does is it gives you a way to browse

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YouTube without logging in to a Gmail account, and also it blocks ads, and it gives you other

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options like, like you can download videos straight from the Invidious web interface and things like

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that, now it doesn't have, like, its own mobile app, which is okay, I mean, I use it in the browser,

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it's fine, but what I do like about it is that that include all the cred that I hate about YouTube,

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as far as recommend to me things that I have zero interest in, and that have nothing to do with

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what the kind of videos I actually watch, you can import your YouTube subscriptions into

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Invidious as well, so you'll have all your subs there, and YouTube has really gotten bad,

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like, as in just crummy lately, I used it the other day just to kind of look through around,

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you know, I was like, man, I'm really glad that I don't, this isn't the main interface I used

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that access YouTube now, I use Invidious, and that it just, I mean, the amount of things that they

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try to push on you, that's just terrible, I mean, it's like terrible videos, all this clickbait stuff,

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and, you know, anyway, that's the whole other story, but Invidious is what I used to view YouTube,

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not a host by own videos, instead of using YouTube, like I did in the past, I used peer to,

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and peer to YouTube is another self-hostible web application that you can upload your videos to,

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it's federated as well, so you can browse other federated peer to instances, and the name kind of gives

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you a clue as into how it works, where it, it doesn't just stream from your server, it also

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uses other peers that are part of the network to help you stream the data, so it doesn't

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bog down your server, if you have a lot of people watching your videos, and you can comment on videos,

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you can add hashtags, you can do whatever you want to, just like you can, YouTube. Now, of course,

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the audience is way, way smaller, and if you really want to engage with people, you're going to have

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a lot harder time, and then you would with YouTube, which already has a huge built-in audience,

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but peer toops getting bigger and better every day, but it's self-hosted and it's federated,

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so you're going to have to understand that as you're searching for things, you may come across

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videos or opinions, things like that that you don't agree with, and then would never be allowed

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on YouTube or any other centralized service, but that's kind of the trade-off of a self-hosted

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or federated option like that, is anybody can pretty much post whatever they want, and there's

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ways to block those things, and block other users that you find like trolls and stuff like that,

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so ways to do that, but for me anyway, it is satisfying to see people engage with my videos

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on peer to, but I don't, you know, I don't make it's not monetized or anything like that,

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but also I don't have ads or anything, you know, that a centralized service would try to push

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into your videos or make you watch if you're watching other videos, so as far as YouTube goes,

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I use it in videos to watch YouTube videos and I use peer to post my own videos, so let's see

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what else. Hangouts, Google Hangouts, I was a big user of that, and of course we all know what happened

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to Google Hangouts, and now I have no idea what it is, Google Chat, I think they had several other

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services, it's in the graveyard pretty much though, so Hangouts was pretty big with me and my friends

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because even if you had an Android phone and somebody else had an Apple phone, it would, you know,

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it was cross-platform and we could all chat with each other and different Hangout rooms and stuff like that,

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and from there I went to Signal or Telegram, I'm not sure which one I went to first,

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but it may have been Telegram, and that was okay, you know, people weren't as familiar with Telegram,

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once again, even though it's a more privacy oriented, you don't own the main server and you don't

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really have access to it and so it's always kind of bugging me in the back of my mind and signals

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the same way, I mean it's open signals open source of course, but unless everybody subscribes to

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your Signal server, you're not going to be able to communicate with other Signal users, so it's open

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source, but it's still centralized, and there's there's text messages to things like that,

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but ultimately I kind of settled on the Matrix protocol using the Synapse server and the

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element as a client, so Matrix has been a big kind of boon for me as far as finding other

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like-minded people through different Matrix rooms and then chatting with my friends and we have

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a Matrix room for the lug cast and, you know, where people can gather and so it's replaced,

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you know, things like Google Hangouts and Telegram and stuff like that, and I host my own Matrix server,

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so I have control over it, you know, I don't have to worry about it, somebody pulling the service

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I'm dating, and I've used Discord in the past as well, which is pretty cool, but from what's

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like to be upfront in this episode, I got banned from Discord, and it wasn't anything I did,

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and it was- I think I was using a Yahoo email account and it had gotten hacked or something,

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so apparently we ever had my Yahoo account and disseminated all this spam and stuff, and so

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they, of course, they didn't listen anything I had to say, which I didn't really care,

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I wasn't even best didn't Discord, but so that got me out of Discord, which is kind of what

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turned me on to Matrix in the first place, is because, well, who's going to ban me from other

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server and nobody, you know, and also what I hear from other people from friends is Discord is kind of

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they're really pushing their paid service, maybe nitro or something like that, and

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there was some kind of uproar about terms and conditions that, anyway, I don't really keep up with

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that stuff, but to me, it seems like as far as a chatting service goes, you want to keep those

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chats that you have with friends and maybe you want to go back and look at things that you

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said in the past and look at web links and stuff like that, and if that all depends on Discord,

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always being there, or always providing you access and not paywalling you at some point in time,

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and I think you are maybe, be heading for, you know, a bad time in the future or something

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that ever happens to all your messages and stuff like that, so that kind of starred me on the

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whole Discord thing, and I move permanently to Matrix, and I've enjoyed Matrix, and I recommend

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everybody, at least give it a try, you can sign up, you know, a free account on Matrix.org, and

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just see if you like it, and see if you can talk to friends and enjoy it as well, so far as chatting

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programs, you know, chatting applications, Matrix, and around about way has replaced Google

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Hangouts for me. I see what else I'm trying to think. Okay, I know one thing that I still rely on Google for,

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it's just in full disclosure, is I use Google domains for all my domains, but I don't have to,

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you know, that's one thing that's that there's so many domain providers out there that I could

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sign up with anybody, it's just me being lazy, and honestly, they don't collect a lot of

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information for me when it comes to, you know, just having a domain service with them, so it's

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not like a Gmail account where everything is recorded and stuff like that, so I'm a, you know,

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switch just to fully get off Google in the future, but I'm not really not in the big hurry,

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so it's not, because it's, it's not a big deal, it's cheap to 12 bucks a year or so, and they're,

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they're reliable, so I'm trying to think, I know there's something, okay, social, kind of like social

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media, I don't know if anybody that's listening, I would use it in the past, but Google Plus,

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I thought it was great. That was one of the things that Google did that was really disappointed

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that they got rid of, because to me, it did social media right, or as far as, you know, the

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people that you interact with, you could have any circles, and it was very tech-oriented as far

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as the audience that I was drawn to on Google Plus, and it wasn't just full of ads, you know,

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of course they were harvesting your data, which is how they were coming down a float, and I don't

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think it really took off, like in the mainstream, so, you know, just like a lot of Google products,

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kind of went away, but at that, at the time, I thought they did a good job with Google Plus,

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and that was my main kind of social media outlet with Google Plus, and after that went away,

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I went to Newy, which I still haven't accounted, I just don't visit it anymore,

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and Newy is actually, or is actually, I think it's still around, it's still pretty good,

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as far as I know, you know, a lot of people don't use it, like they used to, and, but, you know,

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they tell you it's privacy-oriented, and it's very minimal, as far as ads go, and things like that,

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and that lots of groups and stuff, cool groups, which is what I like about Google Plus to,

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Facebook has always been like a non-starter with me, there's just way too many things wrong with Facebook.

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I could do a whole show on that, things that are on the Facebook, Twitter, I just don't really care

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about, so Google Plus, and then Mewee was cool, and, but now that I've gone kind of the self-hosted

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route, I just took to master it on, I was moaned, I was moaned, I was, which is also really easy to do,

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you can know, I hosted natively, in a virtual machine, I think I have about 128 gigabytes of

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a hard drive space on there, and then maybe only like 2 gigabytes of RAM, I can't remember it.

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I have to go back and look, but anyway, it doesn't take, it's not very resource intensive either,

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and depending on what you post, you really don't need a lot of space, but as far as just like

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following people that I'm interested in, and putting my own projects out there and just quick

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little notes and photos and stuff like that, I'm actually just sticking to master it on my own

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mastered on instance, and it's federated as well, so that, as far as like tech-oriented things,

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that I'm really interested in, mastered on does a good job of replacing Google Plus for me,

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for what I need it for, or what I want it for, I don't need it for what I want it for.

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If I want to write longer-form things, I have a blog that I can do that with, and I use

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right-freely, which is a, I like a blogging service that you can host yourself, or you can sign

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up for a right-freely account on the own, but it's federated as well, so I mean, I can follow

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anybody's right-freely blog from any other federated service, like mastered on, you know, people

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follow my right-freely blog from their own mastered on account and stuff, and so for like

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longer-form articles that aren't just quick messages on mastered on, I'll post them a blog

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that's right-freely. And I recommend right-freely, it's really easy, it's just a real simple

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web service, and I have that in a Linux container. I think I have like one to go on for that, and maybe

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64-year-olds of hard drives, based I believe, of storage on that container, which is more than enough

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for how you use it for mailing just writing, and sometimes small videos, if I post a video on

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the area, it would be linked back to my peer too, which I have plenty of storage on, so I'm trying

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to think of what else I might use the Google services. I use Android, which, you know, as a Google

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company, but I would really like to go to a Linux phone one day right now, the whole Linux mobile

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landscape is a little rough, but I still have hope, you know, because the pine phone and what

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Librum is done in other companies, that they will keep advancing in a way that I can actually

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use it as a daily driver without sacrificing too much. As long as I have certain applications,

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you know, GPS is what I use a lot of my phone, and things like that, so I'm hoping in the future,

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I can get rid of Android too, which would, I guess, would kind of be the final nail in the

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coffin for Google. For me, I still use Google search, but other search engines are catching up,

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especially with ChadGPT integration and things like that, so sometimes you're used being,

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there's several self-hosted search engines that you can use as well. I can't remember the names of them all

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but yeah, I've tried them in the past and I had a hard time searching for things, finding what

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I wanted. That the goal was decent, I used that the goal quite a bit, along with Google,

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search and being and things like that, but I wouldn't really call that, you know,

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because I don't log into that, I mean, I'm sure they keep a history of what I search for,

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but I'm not logged in when I'm doing searching on Google searches, and so I don't really

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wouldn't say that that's anything, you know, that I would miss if Google search went away,

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and there's plenty of other search engines. So I can't really think of any other Google search,

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as I use. I guess Android is a big one, as long as I use Google maps on my phone too,

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which open street maps have been looking at a lot, and I wanted to contribute to that as well. So

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oh and oh, I don't think my title might be a little misleading how I left Google behind,

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because I didn't completely leave it, but I was able to replace a lot of the services that

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I'd used Google for in a past, and maybe this will give you kind of an overview of some things

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that you can do if you want to, if you want to decentralize your digital life and get off of

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Google or Microsoft and some of the big players out there. So if you get any questions,

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feel free to leave any comments on the HPR or episode page, and that I'd be happy to answer them

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for now, have a good night, and I'll talk to you later.

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